


Safe

by StrangerWriter



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Hopper being a dad, Jopper, Mileven, alternative storyline, el cant always be a badass, lsd mind control, mentions of Brenner
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-02-23 21:20:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18710176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrangerWriter/pseuds/StrangerWriter
Summary: When El is kidnapped and nearly stripped of her powers in captivity, Hopper comes to rescue her. El's friends and family try to help her get back to her old life in Hawkins but things are different now.





	1. Chapter 1

Hopper entered the room cautiously, sliding his hand along the wall to search for a way to turn on the lights. His fingers bumped into something that felt like a light switch, and he flicked it upwards.

The abrupt brightness of the lights startled El, and she slowly blinked her eyes open. When she saw him, she managed to prop herself up on her elbow, staring at him in disbelief.

He knew exactly how she felt.

He hadn’t expected to find her here this easily. She wasn’t hidden, and her door hadn’t even been locked or secured.

She was laying on a small bed, covered by a sheet and dressed in only underwear and a shirt that came to the top of her thighs. He could tell that she’d lost weight. Her face was thinner, and her eyes were rimmed with unhealthy, dark circles.

When she didn’t immediately get up, he moved to her bedside. “Let’s get you out of here,” he told her softly, attempting to pick her up, though something tugged her back down.

He pulled the sheet back to find that her ankles were shackled in two white fabric ties attached to the bed posts. He grabbed his pocket knife out of his jeans and began quickly sawing at the easiest point of access, which was the fabric between the posts and her legs. He didn’t ask why she hadn’t used her hands or her powers to release them herself.

El laid on the bed lifelessly until she felt the tension on her legs let up. Even though the bonds were still wrapped around her ankles, she realized that she could freely move both of her legs again.

A strangled cry unwillingly escaped from her lips, and Hopper glanced back at her open door. He quickly whispered, “Shhh. It’s okay. You’re okay,” though he couldn’t stop the urgency and concern from creeping up in his own voice.

He slid his arms under her and picked up her too light body.

El cried out just as Hopper was hit hard in the back of the head, falling forward onto her bed. It hurt, but he wasn’t disabled in the slightest. He left El on the bed and turned around, throwing a punch straight into the assailant’s face, blood instantly spilling from the man’s nose. Two more blows later and the man was passed out on the ground.

Hopper picked El up again and adjusted his grip so that she was on his hip. She wrapped her legs and arms tightly around him, practically freeing both of his arms. With a pistol in one hand, he took off as fast as he could while carrying a small teenager. He made his way as silently as possible back through the building. This place hadn’t been nearly as secure as the lab. At the front door, he stepped over the body of the only other night guard that he had already easily taken out.

El knew they were outside when the cool air hit her bare legs, but she still didn’t open her eyes. Hopper didn’t bother putting her in the passenger seat. He climbed in the driver’s side and slammed the vehicle into drive with El still clinging to him between his body and the steering wheel.

He drove well over the speed limit until he hit the highway, not even caring which direction they were travelling. Hopper anxiously watched in his rear view mirror for the next 20 miles until he was satisfied that they were not being followed. He wondered if El had fallen asleep because she hadn’t moved or said a word since they had gotten in the car.

When he pulled up on a nearly empty truck stop, he pulled over to get her settled into her own seat. Hopper looked down at her and realized that she had not been asleep. Her eyes were consciously pressed closed much too tightly for that.

“Kid, it’s okay. You’re safe,” he promised her softly.

El slowly blinked her eyes open and looked around. Her breathing sped up and her silence dissolved into full body, gut-wrenching, sobs. Her hands aimlessly gripped at the fabric of his jacket.

“I know, I know,” Hopper managed to say to her, burying his hand in her hair, holding her close to his chest.  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, when she finally started to calm down.

He was sorry that she was scared. He was sorry he hadn’t found her sooner. He was sorry that she had to go through this sort of torture again. He was sorry that he couldn’t keep her safe enough the first time. He was sorry that she couldn’t live a normal life like she deserved. He was sorry for so much, but that was all he could manage to say.

While it wasn’t terribly cold outside, El started almost violently shivering. Hopper wrapped his arms around her and climbed out, carrying her over to the passenger seat.

When El felt him trying to set her down, she started to panic. “No! Please, no!” she cried, desperately trying to hold on to him.

“It’s just the other side of the car,” Hopper tried to explain to her, but she was in almost a state of delirium. He forced her hands off him and moved quickly to get a blanket out of the back seat. The moment he let go of her, El curled up on herself and squeezed her eyes tightly shut again.

Hopper moved back to her open doorway and pulled his jacket off, wrapping it around her shoulders. “Look, I’m right here,” he told her, tucking the blanket in around her too. “El, open your eyes... El, now. Look around,” he pressed when she didn’t respond. “Hey,” he tried again, growing a little worried. “El.” He tapped her cheeks lightly with his fingertips.

El’s eyes snapped open and she looked around wildly, softening only when his eyes met hers. “See? It’s just our car,” he said carefully, realizing now that she actually was delirious and possibly hallucinating from who knows what drugs or maybe just simple dehydration.

Hopper didn’t ask her, and El wouldn’t have been able to tell him anyway. She was forced to take a tablet nearly every other day in the afternoon when Brenner was ready for her. She didn’t know what it was, only that it was terrifying and made it so that she couldn’t fall asleep until it would start to wear off sometime overnight.

El didn’t know that it was LSD- the same drug her mother had been given, only now in a much stronger dose due to her powers.

She could have refused. She could have said no. She could have spit it out. However, Brenner had countered her every move with ultimatums; he threatened that he knew exactly where her friends and family were, and he would take them out, one by one, for every act of disobedience.

So El complied with whatever he wanted. She became his puppet. She took the drugs, even though they sent her to a terrifying place and made her see upsetting things. While her body was physically here, her mind was Upside Down.

“No. No El, look at me,” Hopper instructed forcefully when her eyes started to wander. Her eyes darted around, and she looked absolutely terrified. He got her attention back and noticed how incredibly dilated her pupils were. “Say it with me…I’m okay. I’m safe…El?” he pressed.

“I’m- okay. I’m safe,” she choked out.

The shadows surrounded Hopper, and she wondered why he didn’t seem scared of them too. But still, she didn’t take her eyes off his, knowing that even if what she was saying wasn’t true, at least she wasn’t alone anymore.

“Good, yeah,” he said letting out a breath. “I’m okay. I’m safe,” he repeated with her again and again, until eventually her breathing slowed down, though her worried expression remained. 

When Hopper was satisfied she could be on her own for a minute, he closed her door and made his way back to his seat. Luckily, they had been heading in the right direction on the highway, so he pulled back onto the interstate and continued driving.

The drive to her hidden location in the middle of Nebraska had been over 12 hours away from Hawkins, so they had a bit of a trip left. He turned the radio on to a soft volume, in hopes that it would help El relax and realize that she was out of that place now.

He occasionally glanced at her every now and then, trying to keep an eye on her without giving away the fact that he was very concerned about her mental state. He wanted her to feel as normal as possible again, and he knew that treating her like she was going to break, wouldn’t help.

He also knew that she was exhausted and just wished she’d close her eyes and sleep, but she never did. El stayed bundled up in his jacket and the blanket, staring blankly ahead. What he didn’t know was that she couldn’t fall asleep, because if she did, the monsters would get her.

About an hour into the drive, he saw the familiar lights of a fast food restaurant approaching at the next exit.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

El didn’t answer or even acknowledge that he was talking to her.

“Thirsty?” he tried again, still met with silence. “Well, I’m starving,” he told her as casually as possible, pulling into the first restaurant with a drive thru.

Truly, he wasn’t hungry. In fact, he felt almost sick with guilt and worry when he looked at her. But he ordered two hamburgers, french fries, a soda, and a milkshake anyway, hoping he could entice her to eat at least one of those options.  He managed to ingest a hamburger, before shoving the rest of the food towards her.

“I’m really ruining my diet here. You should probably help me eat some of this,” he told her, holding the milkshake out towards her.

As if something clicked in her head, El turned to him and carefully grabbed the cup with both hands. She took a slow sip from the straw. It was strawberry, her favorite flavor.

She never reached for any food, but she did occasionally take a drink every now and then from the cup, even though she remained in her almost catatonic state. Again, Hopper waited for her to fall asleep, but she never did.

They drove for hours in silence until nearly 3 AM, when he felt so tired that he realized it probably wasn’t safe for him to be driving anymore; he’d been awake for nearly 24 hours now.

Hopper pulled into the parking lot of the first motel with a vacancy sign lit up.

“Home?” El’s quiet voice asked, startling him. It came out as a question, though it was pretty obvious this was not their home.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, we’ll be home soon. Just a few more hours. We’re going to stop here to sleep for a little while,” Hopper explained to her. He didn’t want to leave her alone in the car, but he looked over her disheveled, pants-less state, and knew he couldn’t bring a kid looking like this inside without looking suspicious. “I just have to go into the office to get a room key. I’ll be right there,” he told her pointing through the window to the small check-in desk.  El didn’t respond, so he quickly got out of the vehicle and went inside.

“We only have single rooms left,” the older front desk woman informed him, eyeing his car parked out front.

“Oh, that’s fine. It’s just me and my daughter,” he excused quickly.

“Awfully late to be travelling. Where you two headed?” she asked curiously.

“Meeting my wife and son out in New York. Moving,” he lied easily.

“Long ways to move, huh.”

“Yeah, just trying to get as far as we can every day.”

She smiled at him sympathetically. “That’ll be 16 dollars”.

He pulled out his wallet, glancing nervously at the car. Even though he was decently certain that they hadn’t been followed, he hated leaving El alone.

The two exchanged the money for a room key.

“It’s room 207. Just up those steps on the second floor.” The woman pointed to the staircase outside.

“Thanks. I appreciate it,” Hopper smiled back, hoping to make their interaction as benign as possible.

He went back out to the car and moved to a parking space closer to the stairs. He didn’t necessarily want the nosy front desk clerk to be able to see El up close.

When he parked the car, El didn’t move to get out, so he walked around to her door. He removed the half empty cup of warm, strawberry milk from her hands and did a once over. His eyes stopped on her ankles, which were still wrapped in the fabric that had previously held her to her bed.

“Let’s get these off you,” he told her softly. It was the middle of the night, but if anyone were to have seen her, it would have looked unusual. “Stay still,” he warned, though she hadn’t moved in hours.

He slid his pocket knife between the fabric and her skin until the wraps dropped to the floor of the car. Her skin underneath was chaffed and red, one of the few physical signs of the abuse she’d suffered in the days since she had gone missing.

He also realized that El was still dressed rather inappropriately, so he wrapped the blanket around her again and picked her up to carry her to their room. El had come so far in just a year and half with him, but it was almost as if they were starting over. Only this time, he wouldn’t have to work so hard to gain her trust. El buried her face against him and clung to his side, like she was still deathly afraid of something or someone.

Hopper wasn’t aware that it’d been just over 12 hours since she’d been given any LSD, so while El was starting to have some moments of clarity again, there were still flashes of darkness and monsters all around her.

When she was high on the drugs they had given her, she wasn’t consciously able to use her powers. Instead, they came out only in unexpected and frightening ways. And when she wasn’t trapped in the darkness, Brenner all but stripped her of her strength with dangerous threats.

A few months ago, when she was home, the monsters never scared her much; she always felt like she could handle them. However, now that they were coupled with the paralyzing thought of her being the cause of harm to the people she loved so much, fear took over.

Day by day, she started to forget what it was like to have choices; she started to shut down.

Hopper shifted her in his arms to unlock the door to their room. Lit only by the lights streaming in through the window, he made his way into the dark room. His legs bumped into the side of the bed, and he sat down on the edge, reaching for the lamp on the small end table. When it turned on, El lifted her head to look around.

Hopper was able to lay her down on the bed without much of a fight. He closed the curtains and went into the bathroom, pouring her a glass of water.

“Kid, try and drink some of this,” he told her, trying to keep the edge of concern out of his voice. El sat up and did as he asked- only a few swallows, but better than nothing. Hopper took the glass from her and set it on the nightstand. “We’re just going to be here long enough to get some sleep, okay?”

El nodded, though she wasn’t sure if she could sleep just yet.

Hopper double checked that the door was locked and kicked his shoes off. He pulled the pistol from its holster and laid it on the end table, climbing into bed next to her. El eyed his gun and her eyes drifted around the room, watching the wall that had looked normal a second ago, get overtaken by creeping black vines.

Hopper shut the lamp off, not thinking about her old fear of the dark that she used to have, especially in unfamiliar places. In the time that she had stayed with him, her fear had gradually declined until it was almost non-existent. But now that the room was black, El instinctively rolled over and curled up close against him. The dark _did_ make it harder to see the monsters, but that’s also what scared her.

She was on top of the bed covers, covered up only by the blanket from the car. When Hopper felt her moving closer, he wrapped an arm around her. “You okay?” he questioned, prepared to turn the lamp back on for the night if she needed him to.

“Safe?” El asked softly.

“Yes, El. It’s safe. I promise,” he replied, exhaling heavily and kissing the top of her head.

Hopper pulled her closer and adjusted the blanket around her so that she was completely covered up aside from her face. He stroked her hair and she let out a shaky breath as her eyes eventually adjusted to the dark.

It wasn’t long until El felt his hand slow and his breathing deepen. She stayed curled up against him, listening to his rhythmic heartbeat under her ear for hours, until the sun was starting to come up, and the last of the monsters had disappeared.

“Safe,” she murmured softly, finally closing her eyes and giving in to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

El woke up a few hours later to find that the bed next to her was empty. She sat up and looked around the room. It somehow looked so different than she remembered it to be before she fell asleep. While it was only a few hours ago, it looked just like a normal room now. There was a small table with a chair, a television, and a lamp. There were no black vines and no monsters, and it seemed much smaller.

Light streamed in around the edges of the curtain and the clock said it was 8:39. She’d been asleep for just over 2 hours. Hopper’s gun was still on the side table, and she heard water running in the bathroom.

El pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. Even though the room no longer looked scary, and Hopper was only in the other room, she didn’t like being here alone. Her leg anxiously bounced up and down until Hopper exited the bathroom.

“Oh, hey kid.” He seemed surprised to see that she was awake already. He ran a hand through his wet hair and sat down on the end of the bed. “We’re going to get back on the road soon, so uh, why don’t you get ready to go.”

“I’m ready,” El answered quietly with a shrug.

“Well, it’s going to be a few more hours before we get home. Ah, maybe go use the bathroom and stuff before we go,” he awkwardly suggested. They wouldn’t be able to stop anywhere for her to do that in the daylight with El dressed the way she was.  

El nodded and shed her blanket, shivering a little when the air hit her bare legs.

When she finished using the bathroom, she stopped to look at herself in the mirror. It was the first time she’d seen herself in weeks. She knew she looked different- she looked bad. There were spots under her eyes that almost looked like bruises, and she desperately needed to shower and brush her hair. Her mouth tasted terrible and she wanted to brush her teeth too, but the bathroom was void of any toiletries.

Instead, she filled a styrofoam cup with water and brought it up to her lips. Even drinking was too much effort and she had to put the cup back down after only a few sips. She was still so tired that everything felt like an overwhelming task. El gave up trying to make herself presentable and stepped back out of the bathroom, waiting for Hopper to give her further instructions.

He was softly speaking on the phone to someone, but after he saw her, he quickly ended the conversation with a, “Yeah, we will.” Once he hung up, he turned his attention to her. “Ready?” Hopper tried to make his voice sound natural, but El noticed that he was different too. He studied her for a moment, and El looked to the ground, hugging her arms around herself self-consciously. She rarely felt shy or uncomfortable around Hopper, but for some reason, she knew how terrible she looked and didn’t want him looking at her any longer.

Hopper sensed her avoidance, so he picked El’s blanket up off the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“Let’s get you home.” He forced a reassuring smile.

El hugged the blanket to herself and managed a nod.

Hopper clipped his weapon back to his waist and walked over to the curtains. He pulled them back just enough to see if there was any activity going on outside in the motel parking lot. Thankfully, all was rather quiet, so he opened the door and ushered El to their vehicle. Hopper remembered that she had bare feet when she gingerly tip-toed down the sharp metal steps, holding on to the railing and obviously trying not to put full pressure on her feet. He contemplated asking her if she needed help, but he didn’t want El to feel like he was babying her, despite desperately feeling like he needed to do just that.

He walked behind her to the car and El climbed into the passenger seat. She wiped the gravel off her feet before curling her legs up and snuggling back up in the blanket.

Hopper drove them only a few feet to stop back at the front office. “Just have to drop the key off,” he explained when El picked her head up, silently questioning the stop.

The nosy clerk from the overnight was gone and the young woman at the desk took his key and quickly checked him out without any questions.

He got back in the vehicle and drove them just down the road to the first gas station he saw. He made sure El was going to be okay for a few minutes while he filled up their car and went inside to pick out a few snacks. He settled on a package of mini donuts, Fruit Wrinkles, and a Coke for El. Not the healthiest of breakfasts, but he reasoned she needed to put some weight back on anyway. He grabbed a pack of cigarettes and a black coffee for himself.

While Hopper was inside, El accidentally made eye contact with a man in a car that had pulled up next to them. He was harmless enough, but she turned and quickly looked away. El still felt like every person who saw her could immediately tell who she was and what she had done. It felt like every single person was just waiting to drag her back to that place.

El pressed her eyes closed and tried to calm herself down. She knew she was being irrational. Thankfully, it was only another minute before Hopper joined her in the car.

“Everything okay?” he asked when he saw her concerned expression.

He knew it was a stupid question. Everything was obviously not okay. But El nodded anyway and relaxed her grip on the blanket a little. Hopper pulled out the folded map from between their seats. “We’ve got, oh, maybe 7 hours before we get home,” he explained, double checking that he knew what route would get them there.

El suddenly felt even more overwhelmed than she had earlier in the motel. She didn’t want to be in the car for 7 more hours- she just wanted to be home.

“Got you some breakfast,” Hopper added, putting the two packages of snacks in her lap. He set her Coke in the cup holder between them and took a long drink of coffee. “Alright. Let’s get out of here.” He sighed and lit a cigarette, pulling out of the parking lot.

El typically didn’t enjoy the smell of cigarette smoke, but today the smell was familiar, and it somehow relaxed her. She realized that maybe that was why Hopper smoked them.

She eyed the food in her lap. While her body was telling her that she was hungry, she didn’t feel much like eating. Still, she forced herself to eat almost all the Fruit Wrinkles anyway and even managed to eat one tiny donut hole, if only to make it so that Hopper would stop watching her out of the corner of his eye. El tucked the rest of the donuts in the compartment on the bottom of her door and curled up in the blanket, resting her head against the window.

Hopper turned the volume on the radio up a little, and they listened to the American Top 40, until El eventually drifted off to sleep to Phil Collins somewhere in the top 20s.

An hour or so later, she kicked the blanket off herself with an uncomfortable whine. The sun was bright and beamed in directly on her. Her cheeks were pink, and her hair stuck to her forehead. She stretched her legs out, and all without opening her eyes, she bunched up the blanket in her hands and turned it into a pillow to rest against the window.

Hopper continued to steal quick glances at her until he was sure that she was back to sleep and wouldn’t catch him looking at her. With the blanket completely off, her body was exposed enough that he could finally see the physical extent of the damage that had been done to her over the past few weeks. He ankles were rubbed red and nearly raw. There were old and fresh bruises on her thighs and a healing scar across her tiny wrist; he felt instantly sick when he started to wonder how the marks came to be. The heat was getting to him now too, so he cracked his window a bit, at least enough for some circulation, but not so much that the wind would be loud enough to wake her up. He hoped she would just stay asleep until they got home.

It was a few hours later when El’s breathing sped up, and she slowly blinked her eyes open. She took a deep breath but laid her head back down against the cool glass of her window. The sun was no longer out, and though they were driving towards some dark, storm clouds, she still felt too hot and her stomach churned uncomfortably. She pressed her eyes closed, but that only seemed to make it worse.

“I don’t feel well,” she finally admitted out loud. Hopper turned to her and saw that she had an arm clutched tightly across her stomach. Her breathing was too fast, and she had an almost panicked expression on her face.

“Like you are going to be sick?”

El gave a nearly imperceptible nod.

“Need me to pull over?”

This time she emphatically nodded, and he slowed the vehicle down on the shoulder of the road. El shoved her door open before they were even fully stopped and leaned out the door to throw up. After a minute, she stumbled out of her seat, not caring that she was pretty much only in her underwear; she needed air. El collapsed to the gravel, pressing her throbbing and spinning head into her hands. Hopper put the car in park and climbed out, joining her on the side of the road.

When she wasn’t actively throwing up, she alternated between unintentionally audible whines and sniffles. She really tried to hold back her tears, but she couldn’t manage to stop them. Hopper realized his anxious pacing probably wasn’t helping, so he sat down next to her and leaned back against the car instead, silently telling her that he would wait there as long as she needed him to. He was thankful that they were on a pretty dead stretch of the highway.

“I’m sorry,” El finally sniffled after a few minutes. She wiped a tear away with her palm but refused to make eye contact with Hopper. She felt stupid and embarrassed for getting sick and crying.

“It’s okay,” he promised her softly. “You just got carsick, that’s all.” He put a hand on her back to comfort her.

“Carsick?” El repeated. Her eyes flicked towards him and then away again.

“Yeah, that happens sometimes when you fall asleep in the car. It can make you feel a little bit nauseous when you wake up,” he explained. “One time when I was a kid, I was on vacation with my friend and his parents and I fell asleep in their car. When I woke up, I puked spaghetti all over,” he smirked, exaggerating with his hands. “I didn’t eat spaghetti again for years.”

El’s eyes softened. Hopper always seemed to know how to make her feel a little bit better, and she knew there was no reason to be feeling so stupid.

“Does carsick make your head hurt too?” she finally managed to ask. She pressed her palm against the middle of her forehead, closing her eyes again.

“You’re probably a little dehydrated too,” he explained with a sigh.

That was his fault. He should have made sure she drank more last night before bed and again before they left this morning. He glanced in the car at the only option he had for her to drink- a bottle of Coke… also his fault. He pulled the bottle out of the car anyway and took the top off, handing it to her.

“Here. Take just a little sip.”

El did as he instructed and made a face. It mixed with the residual acid in her throat and burned as it went down.

“Sorry, kid. Probably not the best thing to drink after puking, huh,” he apologized.

El nodded in agreement. After another few minutes, Hopper helped her stand up and then he knelt back down to brush off the gravel that stuck to her bare legs. El tugged at her short t-shirt, feeling a lot like the day she met Mike, Dustin, and Lucas for the first time. This time was so different, but the awkward and insecure feelings were still very familiar.

El reminded herself that she wasn’t alone anymore and that the man in front of her cared for her. He maybe even _loved_ her, and he would never want her to feel this way.

When Hopper stood up, she turned to him and buried her head against his chest.

“You okay to keep going?” he asked. His arms wrapped around her.

El suddenly wanted to tell him exactly how much she loved him. It was something she thought about a lot over the past few weeks without him, not knowing if she’d ever even see him again.

She wanted to thank him for caring enough to find her but all that came out of her mouth was a soft, “I just want to be home.”

“I know, me too. Probably close to 2 hours or so,” he promised her.

El tried hard not to cry, but a miserable whimper escaped her lips, and Hopper could hear just how uncomfortable she was.

He hated it, but he knew El was incredibly tough. They just needed to make it home and get her settled back into the life that she used to know.

They would get through this.

Hopper helped her back into the car and dug through the fast food bag from the night before, searching for a napkin. He gently wiped the blood that had slowly trickled from one side of her nose. He didn’t want to think about why that was happening now when she hadn’t even been using her powers.

“Ready?” he confirmed, bending over slightly to stand at eye level with her in the seat.

She gave a positive nod, and Hopper uncharacteristically pressed his lips against her forehead for a quick kiss. He pulled back with a heavy sigh and nodded. “Alright, kid,” he told her, buckling her seatbelt around her.


	3. Chapter 3

Hopper stood in El’s open doorway. It was already afternoon on their first full day back at home, and despite the fact that he had been making too much noise on purpose, El was still curled up on her side, fast asleep. Wrapped tightly in her arms were two stuffed animals- the red bear Mike had given her for Valentine’s Day and the brown bear Hopper had gotten her well over a year ago.

When they first moved in together, El was often already wide awake when he would come in her room to get her up in the mornings, even though she looked exhausted. The bear was the first thing he’d ever given her, aside from life's necessities like clothes and food.

El hugged the toy close to her chest every night while he would read to her, and after a few nights, he realized she was actually sleeping all through the night too. Eventually, she didn’t need the bear to fall asleep anymore, but it still never left her bed.

The red Valentine’s bear was different. That one sat on her shelf next to her mirror and dresser. She rarely touched it for fear of getting it dirty or ruining it.

Valentine’s day was on a Thursday that year, which was not one of the usual nights that he allowed the two kids to see each other. But El had made Mike a Valentine’s Day card and used her own money that she had earned doing chores to get him two new comic books, so he begrudgingly agreed to let the kids meet for a few minutes.

Hopper couldn’t hold back an eye roll when Wheeler showed up on their front porch that night holding a red rose, the bear, and a heart shaped box of chocolates. El almost cried when he gave it to her and she quickly wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tightly and planting a kiss on the boy’s lips, before she sheepishly pulled back glancing at Hopper. It was the kid’s first Valentine’s Day together and he didn’t have the heart to pry them apart, so he just turned away and pretended to be very busy doing the dishes instead.

When Mike heard from Will that El was back home, he immediately began calling the cabin. He had already called three times that morning to see if he could come over to see her, or at least just to talk to her on the phone but Hopper informed the kid that she was still sleeping. He promised he’d let her call him as soon as she woke up.

During the time that El had been missing, Hopper felt that the boy was probably in worse shape than he had been. Mike was in Hopper’s office every single day, and if he wasn’t at work, the kid was on the phone wondering if there were any new leads or ways he could help look for her. He had dark rings under his eyes too, and Hopper was sure that he wasn’t sleeping well.

None of them had been.

It was hard to sleep when they knew El was out there somewhere and possibly in a lot of danger.   

Last night was the first night that Hopper slept for more than a few hours, and he actually felt well rested that morning when he woke up. He couldn’t exactly blame El for still being asleep; she needed it more than he had. El had been asleep for almost 16 hours now, and he felt like he should wake her up soon so that she’d still be able to get to sleep tonight.

He really hated having to wake her up, but he wanted to get things back to normal for her as quickly as possible and that meant getting her back into a normal sleep schedule.

Plus, she hadn’t really ate much since she’d been with him, and the little bit that she did eat, she had thrown up on the side of the road.

Seeing her asleep with her stuffed animals made her look so young and innocent. Sure, the kid was nearly 15, but in her short time on this planet, she’d gone through some absolutely awful things, things that Hopper was sure that most grown adults weren’t even equipped to handle.

And El wasn’t exactly a kid anymore either. That was something he became well aware of over the past year, especially over the last few months of summer. But seeing her like this almost made that time hard to recall. He found himself actually wishing for the teenage sighs, eye rolls, and door slams again.

“El,” Hopper called, lightly patting her shoulder. El didn’t open her eyes, but only whined and nuzzled her face closer into the two stuffed animals. “Hey, kid. Time to wake up,” he tried again.

This time, El quickly inhaled and bolted up, startling Hopper.

“Hey,” he reassured her with a smile. “You’re home. Everything’s okay,” he promised to the kid who was blinking quickly, looking around her bedroom as if she didn’t know where she was. Her panic only lasted a few seconds until she found his eyes and her face softened, though her fingers stayed gripped so tightly around the stuffed bear that her knuckles were white. He put his hand on top of hers, lightly rubbing her wrist. “Are you ready for some breakfast? Or I guess, maybe lunch and an afternoon snack?”

El turned to look at the clock on her nightstand. It was almost 3 PM. Her stomach felt so empty, like it was gnawing itself from the inside.

“Got a full box of Eggos. Do you want some of those?”

 _Eggos_.

They used to be her favorite food. But now the thought made her feel sick. Right after Brenner had taken her, he tried to be her ‘friend.’ He knew she liked Eggos, and it was all he attempted to feed her for the first few days, even though she refused every bite, no matter how hungry she felt.

He eventually became frustrated with her and resorted to threats and controlling her with fear and medication instead.

Brenner was no longer her _Papa_. She saw him for the evil man that he truly was, and he greatly disliked that.

After days without any food, she finally broke down and ate a few bites of the cold waffles that sat all day on the table next to her bed. The taste was so familiar yet made her so homesick and upset that she threw up, accidentally getting it all over herself. El took off her ruined pants that night and no one ever even bothered to bring her another pair. 

El didn’t know why, but she felt like she couldn’t tell Hopper any of that, so she just shook her head no instead.

“Ah, okay,” he said trying not to act surprised; El had never turned down a waffle before. “We’ve got lots of other things. What are you hungry for?”

“Hot dogs?” El finally asked. Hot dogs were the first real meal her and Hopper ever ate together almost two years ago. “Yeah, alright. We’ve got those. Mac and cheese too?” he added, waiting for her to get out of bed.

El wasn’t sure she could eat that much but nodded in agreement anyway. She followed him to the kitchen and watched as he poured water into a pot on the stove. El brushed her matted hair out of her eyes and walked into the bathroom deciding to take a shower before they ate.

Last night when they got home, she was so tired and sick that she just grabbed her red bear off the shelf and crawled straight into bed without a single word.

In the bathroom, El turned the water on as warm as it would go, stepping into the shower only when the water was so hot that condensation started collecting on the mirror. When it hit the red skin on her ankles, she winced and jumped out of the shower stream, reaching to turn the water colder.

El didn’t know it, but some of the doses of LSD started causing her to have violent seizures. She had no idea she was having them, just that one night Brenner and another man came in and strapped her legs tightly to the bed posts, warning her not to take them off.

“ _It’s for your own safety, Eleven_ ,” Brenner had cautioned. As if he ever cared about her safety.

When El came out of the LSD fog the next day, her ankles were red and burned under the white straps. Even though they started causing her a lot of pain, she never attempted to take them off after they’d been put on; there was no point. Plus, she thought that maybe if she was physically strapped to something in this world, the monsters would have a harder time taking her.

Once the water in the shower was cooler, she grabbed her bottle of shampoo and washed her hair twice. She slathered it in conditioner and looked down at herself while she waited for it to work through the tangles in her hair. Even though she’d been gone for 4 weeks- or was it longer- Hopper had left all of her things in the bathtub just as she had left them. While she waited to rinse out the conditioner, she grabbed her shaving gel and pink razor off the soap tray and ran it over her legs.

She remembered how much she had begged and pouted for him to buy if for her and to let her start to shave her legs. That all felt like it was years ago, almost in a different life. It seemed so stupid and pointless now. The razor nicked her knee and she just stared down at herself as the blood mixed with water and dripped down her leg.

Hopper had finished making the macaroni before El had even turned off the water in the shower. Though his anxiety was getting worse every minute and he briefly contemplated knocking on the door to see if she was okay, he thought better of it and decided to give her more time. El deserved to have a few minutes alone without him hovering over her.  

He suddenly understood exactly how Joyce felt after she got Will back. He almost felt like if he couldn’t see El, then it was possible that something bad had happened again. Hopper knew that it was only a matter of time before they would come for her again. And he knew that if they took her a second time, it was likely he would never see her again.

The cabin, and Hawkins in general, wasn’t the safest place for her anymore, and they would have to deal with that fact soon. But he pushed that out of his head. They weren’t dealing with that today. The tripwires were still active, and Hopper felt like he could defend the two of them against any of the few men that Brenner had left on his team.

Hopper let out a breath when the shower finally shut off. After a few minutes, El came out wrapped only in a towel. She walked to her room and Hopper finished heating up their lunch. He mixed a gallon of her favorite flavor of blue Kool-aid and finally, she joined him at the table. She wasn’t wearing any of her newer clothes, but instead, she was dressed in one of her over-sized flannel shirts and a pair of also ill-fitting jean shorts. Though her hair was longer now, she reminded him of the little girl who sat wide-eyed and nervous across from him at the same table nearly two years ago.

He set down her cup and plate of food in front of her. El picked up the glass and immediately drank almost all of the juice. Hopper grabbed the pitcher of Kool-aid and refilled her cup before sitting down at his seat across from her.

“Thank you,” El smiled up at him. She picked up her fork and stabbed some of the macaroni noodles. Hopper smiled back at her, feeling so relieved to just see her smile.

“Remember when you thought hot dogs were actually made of dogs?” Hopper smirked at her.

El smiled again and nodded yes. Hopper felt even more tension evaporate.

His little girl was home.

The two were almost finished eating when the phone rang.

Shit. He’d forgotten what he promised the boy earlier, and he actually felt a little bit bad about it.

“I’m sure that’s Mike. Do you want to talk to him?” Hopper asked, knowing that was a dumb question. The two were practically inseparable before she went missing.

El sat up a little straighter and went still.

“Do I have to?” she asked quietly.

“No,” he told her instantly, though he couldn’t hide the surprise in his voice.

He picked up the phone, not exactly sure how he’d gently let the kid down. “Yeah, she’s up... It’s just, uh, she’s eating lunch right now. Maybe she can call you back later?”  

He could hear the disappointment so clearly in the kid’s voice.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Mike sighed. “Just tell her I really miss her, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Hopper agreed. He wasn’t sure if he was going to actually do it, but when he sat down across from El, he felt like he had to. The two kid’s relationship was intense, but he knew that Mike would make any sacrifice to keep El safe. The least he could do was relay a message to her from him.

“Uh, Wheeler wanted me to tell you that he really missed you.” He spoke with his usual exaggerated annoyance, but added, “You can call him later tonight if you want.”

El looked down to her plate and nodded. It was a strange reaction, but he tried to brush it off.

The first time he had ever let the two kids talk on the phone, they didn’t hang up for over 3 hours. Their phone call nights were soon limited to once a week and for 15 minutes at a time. Once the boys got her a Supercom for Christmas, the telephone limitations didn’t seem to make her as upset anymore since she could talk to all of them almost anytime she wanted.

After eating, El went into the living room and sat down on the couch. Hopper finished cleaning up the dishes and joined her. They sat quietly and watched television into the early evening. It was similar to how they spent their first few weeks together.

During a commercial break, Hopper knew he needed to get this out of the way. He was almost certain that she already knew, but he felt like he had to verbalize it anyway.

“El, uh, if you ever want to talk about what happened while you were gone, I’m here, okay? Or if you want to talk to someone else, Will, Joyce, Mike…we all understand. We’re here for you, kid.” Hopper groaned in his head. The sentence had come out sappier than he had intended. “It’s just, I know sometimes it feels easier to keep everything inside and to try to forget about it but talking about things to people you trust can really help. You know, make you feel like you aren’t so alone.”

El heard a hint of frustration in Hopper’s sigh when he got done talking. She looked to the floor misinterpreting it as frustration towards her, when that wasn’t the case at all; he was upset with himself, and he so wished Joyce was here. Something like that always sounded better coming from her.

El couldn’t bring herself to look at him again. She knew that she wasn’t alone, and she desperately wanted to feel better, to feel normal again. And most of all, she wanted to talk to Hopper, but it’s like the words were stuck in her throat with no way to get out.

She was still paralyzed with fear.

El was quiet for a moment before she turned to look at him. Hopper looked back at her hopefully. “Is it okay if I go to bed now?” she asked.

“Yeah, kid. Of course,” he agreed, even though it was only a little after 7.

After El went to her bedroom, he cracked a beer and picked up the phone to call Joyce. He hadn’t been able to spend much time with her over the past few weeks, and he hadn’t spoken to her since he called her from the motel just to tell her that he had El and that they were both safe.

When he heard her voice tonight, he realized just how much he missed her and he sank down to the kitchen chair cradling the receiver against his shoulder.

“How are things going?” Joyce asked.

“I think she’s okay. It’s just, I don’t know. She’s different.” Joyce could hear the frustration in his voice already.

“Of course she’s different, Hop. We have no idea what she’s been through,” she reminded him.

“I know, I know. That’s the thing. She’s completely silent about it. I think she was on some kind of drugs or some other shit when I found her. It was almost like she was hallucinating or something. It was hard to see her like that,” he revealed.

“Oh god, that poor thing.”

“I just want her to talk to me,” he sighed. This was almost the exact conversation in reverse that he had with Joyce regarding Will nearly a year ago.

“I know. And she will… when she’s ready. You have to understand, she’s a kid who’s gone through nearly her entire life by herself. She’s used to handling things on her own. The idea that she has people she can trust, people who care for her…you know, this is all still new to her okay?”

Joyce was right. She’s always right.

“El didn’t even want to talk to Mike today,” he added.

“It’s only her first day back. Let’s just give her some time.”

Hopper sank further into the chair.

“God, I’ve missed you so much.” He had felt like he had to tell her. Apparently, he was feeling sappy all over again tonight.

“I missed you too,” Joyce replied, wondering if he could hear the smile in her voice when she answered. “You should both come over tomorrow. If you think-“ Joyce paused. “Is it safe?”

“Yeah…I don’t know what I’m going to do about that. It’s probably no less dangerous than having her here,” he answered truthfully.

“Alright, well, just get some sleep tonight. And I’ll see you tomorrow,” Joyce added hopefully.

“Night, Joyce.”

“Goodnight, Hopper.”

Hopper brought his beer over to the couch and collapsed into the cushions. He felt like first checking to see if El was asleep, but he didn’t want her to catch him in case she hadn’t been.

It was after 10 PM when Mike called the cabin one last time. He had been hiding in Nancy’s bedroom to use her phone so his mom wouldn’t yell at him.

Mike could sense that something was weird earlier, and he started feeling like Hopper was hiding something.

When Hopper told him that El was back in bed already, this time the kid demanded to know, “Is she really okay?”

It had been the first thing that came out of his mouth earlier on their very first phone call too. Hopper had told him yes, and he hadn’t intended for that to have been a lie.

“El just needs a little time readjust. That’s all,” Hopper said, reassuring himself just as much as he tried to reassure the kid.


	4. Chapter 4

The following morning Hopper woke up before El and stumbled into the kitchen to start brewing a pot of coffee. Once that was started, he went to El’s bedroom and pushed back the already slightly ajar door, just enough to confirm that she was still safe in bed.

It was the end of summer and though Hopper thought the cabin was far too warm overnight, El was still curled up and fast asleep under multiple blankets.  When the coffee was finished, he filled a mug and brought it over to the table. Just as he was lighting a cigarette, there was a knock on the door. It was their secret knock, and Hopper only needed one guess to figure out who it could be. He pulled the curtain back briefly anyway just to be sure but remained unsurprised by the person he saw.

On his way to unlock the door, he glanced at the time, confirming that it wasn’t even 8 AM yet. The boy was looking out into the woods, but as he heard the locks turning, he whipped his body back around to see who was opening the door. Mike’s look of hope quickly turned to disappointment when he saw that it was only Hopper. Hopper leaned against the doorframe, waiting for him to speak first.

“Is El awake yet?” Mike asked, peering in to the cabin behind him.

“No, she’s not. And perhaps I could have told you that over the phone,” he answered with his usual annoyance, though he couldn’t really blame the boy for just showing up. He was actually surprised that he even made it this long without seeing her since she’s been home.

Mike continued trying to look inside around Hopper’s body. “I’m sorry, but I just really need to see her,” he finally said. With an obvious determination, he pushed past Hopper and stormed straight to El’s bedroom, pushing her door open the rest of the way.

He didn’t go in any further, but instead just stared at her in bed as relief washed over him.

Hopper hadn’t been lying. El really was back, and as far as he could see, _she was okay_. Mike felt a lump in his throat, and he tried hard not to cry. Hopper stood back and just let the kid have his moment.

Finally, Mike turned around and looked to Hopper. The next question out of his mouth wasn’t exactly what Hopper had been expecting to hear.

“What was it like where you found her?” Mike’s voice was soft, but he looked Hopper in the eye with a fierce intensity.

Hopper nodded for Mike to go sit down at the kitchen table, and he did so without a fight. Hopper closed El’s door most of the way, leaving it open just a crack, before joining him.

Hopper picked up his coffee and took a long sip, while Mike watched him expectantly.

“It was just like a normal room,” Hopper sighed, deciding to answer the question. “There was a bed and a table and that’s pretty much it.” He shrugged and set his mug back down on the table. He purposely left out the fact that El had been restrained to the bed- the kid didn’t need to hear that.

“That’s it?” Mike asked, sensing that he wasn’t being told the full story. “What were they doing with her then?” Hopper didn’t answer, so Mike pressed on. “I want to know. I _need_ to know. I need to know what she went through,” Mike insisted, though his voice broke at the end.

“See, that’s the thing, kid. I honestly couldn’t tell you yet. And El isn’t ready to talk about it.” 

As much as Hopper often pretended to dislike him, he knew that Mike was a good kid. If El was ever going to be with someone, he was glad that she chose him though he’d never admit to that out loud. In terms of teenagers, Mike was responsible, honest, and most definitely, completely infatuated with his daughter. Mike was also relatively mature for his age and had an immense patience with El, which was something that even he didn’t always have.

“But she’s going to be fine,” Hopper added, although he was still trying to convince himself of that fact too.

“Did you see him?” Mike asked in an almost urgent tone.

Hopper shook his head no, understanding that the _him_ Mike had been talking about was Brenner.

“So he’s still out there then,” Mike said, his eyes narrowing. “What’s stopping him from doing it again?” His tone raised with the last question, full of anger but also edging on worried.

“We don’t know that he won’t try.” Hopper couldn’t deny that fact. “We are just going to have to be careful for a little while until I figure something out.”

“Well I won’t let them hurt her again.”

While the kid’s declaration was earnest, Hopper knew when it came down to it, it wouldn’t mean much. After all, how hard could a 15 year old kid fight when he was up against someone, or something, much bigger.

Hopper hadn’t spoken those words out loud, but Mike could read what was going through Hopper’s head.

“I _won’t_. They’ll have to kill me first,” Mike vowed. The two stayed quiet for a few moments until Mike asked, “Can I wait here until she gets up?” His voice was much softer now, almost as if he thought Hopper was going to tell him no.

And maybe he was going to, except at that moment, Hopper caught something moving out of the corner of his eye. El hovered at her bedroom door, her hand on the door knob, almost like she was trying to quietly retreat back into her room before either of the two could acknowledge her.

“You won’t have to wait long,” Hopper said anyway, nodding towards her.

Mike shoved the kitchen chair back and rushed over, pulling her into his arms without warning. She brought her arms up to hug him, but after a second, Hopper saw how she tensed, and she ended up dropping her arms to her sides. Mike dropped his head, burying it against her neck and hair, and it took him a few moments to realize that something seemed off. El was tense and it was as if she tried to avoid touching him. He pulled back but dropped one hand to her wrist. Mike felt like he couldn’t stop touching her, like this was all a dream that he would wake up from, and she’d be gone again.

“I missed you so much,” Mike told her, tears brimming in his eyes. He scanned over her face and body quickly, his fingers brushing against the healing cut on her wrist. Hopper saw how El’s expression changed to the same look on her face that she had when he had really looked at her for the first time in the motel room. She looked unsure and Hopper wanted to help her, but he didn’t know how; Mike was usually the person she felt the most comfortable around.

El’s heart was racing and she felt an overwhelming flood of emotions.

“Me too,” she finally answered softly, though she continued to pull a little farther away. Mike dropped his hand from her arm, not wanting to make El feel uncomfortable in any way.

“How- how are you?” Mike asked. It was a really dumb question, but he didn’t know what else to say.

“I’m good,” El lied quickly. “Tired,” she shrugged, looking to the floor.

“Oh, uh yeah, yeah. I didn’t wake you up, did I?” Mike asked, suddenly feeling awful that he had been speaking so loud earlier.

“No, you didn’t.” She shook her head for emphasis. “I was just getting up to go to the bathroom.” She nodded towards the door across the room.

“Right, sorry,” Mike apologized, moving to the side so she could step around him.

 El gave him a slight smile and walked across the room to the bathroom, closing herself in.

Mike turned to Hopper the second the door was shut. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come over without asking her first,” he apologized again.

This wasn’t the reunion Hopper or Mike had pictured, but it was clear El wasn’t quite ready to see him yet for whatever reason. Mike moved towards the front door. Hopper could see the worry and disappointment on Mike’s face, though he tried his best to hide it.

“No, no, it’s alright kid,” Hopper replied, attempting to reassure the sad teen in front of him. Mike moved to the front door anyway. “She’s just tired and needs a little more time to get used to being home. That’s all,” Hopper told him again, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Mike nodded and took a deep breath. “Yeah, yeah, of course she does.” He’d be there for her no matter what, and right now if El needed space, he would give her whatever she needed.

El came out of the bathroom and looked at the two men standing by the door. Hopper dropped his hand from the boy’s shoulder.

“Uh, well, I’m going to get going so you can eat breakfast and stuff,” Mike excused, smiling at her with the same look of pity Hopper had.

El hated it. She didn’t want them to be in any more pain because of her.

Hopper was starting to feel a little more concerned too. This was the briefest amount of time the two kids had ever spent together, and yet, El didn’t complain when Mike said he would be leaving. Sure, maybe she needed time just like he kept saying, but this almost felt like something else was wrong. No matter how lost or upset she’d felt, she always wanted Mike near her.

El nodded and tried to force a genuine smile too.

“Okay well, maybe I can come back later or something,” Mike said, looking to Hopper.

“Yeah, sure kid,” he agreed.

“Goodbye, Mike,” El said softly. Mike wanted to wrap her up in his arms again, but El stayed where she was a few feet away by the bathroom door. El had said those exact words to him once before. And then he didn’t see her again for 353 days.

“See you later El,” Mike smiled at her anyway.

Hopper held the door for him, feeling incredibly sorry for the boy who was clearly trying to keep a brave face for the two of them, or maybe it was just for El.

When the door slammed shut, El let out a relieved sigh and sat down at the table for breakfast. Hopper put two Eggos in the toaster without even thinking about it. That had been their usual morning routine.

El sat quietly across from him and forced herself to eat half of a waffle before Hopper noticed that something else was not right.

“Hey, kid. Are you- are you feeling okay?” He nodded to her barely touched food.

El shrugged. Physically, she was feeling fine, but she didn’t know how to tell him what was actually wrong.

“I know it probably feels weird just going right back to the way everything was before,” Hopper told her softly.

El nodded in agreement. “I think I’m just still sleepy,” she excused, even though she hadn’t felt tired at all.

Hopper eyed her with suspicion but couldn’t argue. El had gotten plenty of sleep these past two nights, but he had no idea how much or how little sleep she’d had over the past month.

“Joyce was hoping we could come over today. Would you be alright with that?”

El looked away from him and down to her plate on the table, a silent indication that she was uncomfortable and didn’t know how to tell him the truth.

“But, it’s okay. If you are too tired, we can always see them another time,” Hopper continued, trying to get El’s attention back before she completely shut down.

“I just want to stay home,” she whispered, so soft that he almost couldn’t make out the words.

“That’s okay kid. We’ll stay home,” he promised, hoping El didn’t catch how his voice was just a touch too high, giving away his concern.

However, El wasn’t stupid. She saw how Hopper looked at her now- how Mike had looked at her earlier.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized because it felt like the right thing to do.

“Seriously, El. It’s alright. I could use another lazy day here anyway.”

Hopper really thought that seeing Joyce would make El feel better, and as much as he wanted to see her too, El came first.

Hopper explained the situation to Joyce on the phone a bit later when El had snuck away to her bedroom. She encouraged him that he was doing the right thing by not forcing her into anything, but as two more days passed, and El continued the same avoidance behavior, Hopper decided he had to get her talking.

“Alright kid,” he sighed, sinking down next to her on the couch. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I need you to tell me something. Why are you avoiding all of your friends?”

El looked at him almost surprised to hear him bring it up, but quickly glanced back down to her folded hands in her lap.

“El,” he pressed. His hand rested on her shoulder. “They aren’t going to be upset with you or anything, and I really think if you spent some time with them, it might help you feel a little better.”

El could feel her throat getting tighter, and she was going to start crying. She bit her lip so hard she could taste blood.

She _did_ want to see her friends.

“I’m…scared,” she finally revealed, tears silently spilling down her cheeks at that word.

Hopper tried to process what she had just said. “Scared...of your friends?” he attempted to clarify.

El shook her head no. Of course, Hopper wasn’t understanding, but she couldn’t verbalize the truth, and so she just cried harder.

“Hey, okay. It’s okay,” he consoled, pulling her close to him. It was the first time since they’ve been home that she had seemed comfortable with any sort of physical touch. El curled into his body, sobbing almost as hard as the first night in the car. “What are you afraid of?” Hopper asked her again.

El knew that it was too awful to admit, and she couldn’t get the words out. When she didn’t respond, he just simply held her until her tears slowed down, and she could finally breathe a little bit better.

El suddenly felt desperate for human contact after the past few days of purposely secluding herself. Hopper was warm and when he wrapped his arms around her, she felt like everything was going to be okay. 

Eventually El closed her eyes and Hopper misinterpreted her mental exhaustion as physical exhaustion and so he helped her into bed. El didn’t want him to leave her alone, and she was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep yet, but she didn’t tell him not to go. After he got her tucked into her bed, his lips pressed against her forehead for just a little longer than usual, and the sigh that escaped his mouth made her feel even more guilty than she already had.

She was hurting him too.

Just like Mike.

She wondered if it would have been better if they _had_ _n't_ found her. But then Hopper confessed something to her that made her think twice.

His voice was soft, near a whisper when he said it. “I love you, kid.” It was the first time Hopper, and actually anyone, had ever said those words to her. “I’m here when you are ready to talk, alright?”

El wanted to tell him that she loved him too, but her voice wasn’t working. Hopper hadn't expected El to say it back. He gave her one more quick kiss on her cheek and told her good night, before leaving her alone in her dark bedroom.

El rubbed at her itchy eyes and cheeks and thought about what it would be like if she was still with Brenner. Right now, she’d be laying in a bigger room, only it wouldn’t have any light creeping in from the doorway like hers did now. The mattress would be much harder and would be covered only with one sheet. Her legs would probably be tied apart to the end of the bed posts, and by now, black shadows would be taking over the walls. Sometimes her heart would feel like it was going to explode from her chest, and at some point, she’d feel a heavy pressure on top of her, and she’d struggle to breathe, almost as if she were suffocating.

Sometimes she’d look around her room and swear that someone, maybe Brenner, was in there with her.

This time in captivity was so different from her life at the lab. She was never hooked up to machines, and there weren’t a whole bunch of people coming in and out every day. El didn’t understand what he was trying to get out of her when he forced her to take the medicine. It didn’t seem like she ever produced any new revelations that could help him in any way; it just felt as if she lost her grip on reality and went a little bit crazier every day instead. She didn’t know how that would help him.

At least if she were still there, her friends and family here would be okay.

As long as Brenner had her and she did what he wanted, they were safe from _him._

Tonight when she eventually closed her eyes to sleep, Brenner was there. The scene was so vivid and realistic that she could even smell the sickening scent of his familiar aftershave. He was wearing black leather gloves, and he had a syringe and needle in his hand. He was quietly walking somewhere. It was dark, and she couldn’t make out where they were, but she felt like she needed to follow him. Suddenly things became clearer, and a door clicked closed behind them. El looked around to see that she recognized the bedroom. The woman laying in the bed was familiar too. Her heart started racing as he approached the sleeping woman, and she ran up behind him just as he reached down to the woman’s neck.

El clawed at Brenner’s hand that held the syringe, screaming for him to stop, but her hands went through him like she was a ghost. The needle pierced the woman’s skin and without hesitation, his thumb pressed down on the syringe, injecting a clear liquid into her. He pulled the needle out and held a cloth against the puncture wound long enough to get it to stop bleeding. She watched the woman's chest rise and fall, slower and slower, until it stopped. El collapsed to the floor, sobbing no over and over again, but no one could hear her. Brenner folded the cloth back up and put it in his pocket, leaving the scene just as quickly and quietly as he arrived.

El gasped and bolted upright. Her cheeks were wet and blood dripped from her nose.

A dream.

It was only a dream, she promised herself again and again.

El stayed awake until early morning, when her eyes couldn’t stay open any longer. When she woke up later that day, she turned to look at her bedroom clock. It was almost noon and she thought it was strange that Hopper hadn’t gotten her up yet.

El came out of her bedroom, and he was sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands, a lit cigarette abandoned on the edge of an ashtray. When he looked up to see her, his eyes were sad and upset.

Something was wrong.

He let her go into the bathroom, and she busied herself by brushing her teeth and her hair, feeling a little sick to her stomach. It was almost as if she knew what he was about to tell her, and she wanted to prolong the revelation for as long as possible.

El stepped out of the bathroom and Hopper took a deep breath as she cautiously approached him.

“Hey, kid. Uh, why don’t you sit down.” He got up and motioned for her to come over to the couch instead of the table. “I have something I need to tell you.”


	5. Chapter 5

There was going to be no easy way to tell her this, but he couldn’t keep this hidden or lie to her again.

El sat down gingerly on the edge of the cushion and he wondered if his body language had given away the fact that something bad had happened. Hopper joined her on the couch.

“Your Aunt Becky called this morning,” he began.

“Mama,” El replied, turning to look at him.

It wasn’t a question; the look on her face told him that she may have already known what was coming next.

“Uh yeah, your mama. She uh, well-” he stammered, not wanting to give the already fragile kid even more horrible news.

El’s breaths were coming too fast and her eyebrows pulled together, while she waited for him to say it out loud.

“When your Aunt Becky went to help get your mama up this morning, she wasn’t breathing.” He paused before continuing. “She died in her sleep last night.”

He could have used different words, maybe something gentler like ‘passed away,’ but he didn’t want El to have any confusion about what had happened.

And she didn’t.

“No,” El gritted through her teeth. The word didn’t come out as a statement of denial- deep down, she had already known this was coming. “It was him,” she went on. Her fists clenched in anger.

“What?”

“He’s not going to stop,” she whispered, quickly blinking as tears started to overflow, her anger slowly dissolving into fear.

“El, what do you mean?”

“He’s- he’s going- to hurt everyone,” she hiccupped.

“Brenner,” Hopper muttered in realization.

He finally understood it all. As long as he didn’t have El, he was going to start taking away everyone she ever cared about, starting with her mama.

El’s face twisted in painful mix of grief and fear. She was shaking, almost violently so, and Hopper collected her in his arms. She whimpered a name that sounded like ‘Mike.’

As the realization of what this all meant dawned on him, Hopper started to understand El’s fear. There was no way he could keep everyone safe. Hell, most of the other children’s parents didn’t even know the truth about what their kids had gone through.

And then suddenly there was only one person on his mind.

 _Joyce_.

He needed her near him, and he needed her right now. She had grown to be more like El’s mother than her birth mother had. What if Brenner had already gotten to her to? How soon was it going to happen again? _Had it already happened again?_

“How did you already know?” Hopper almost demanded. He really needed El to start talking right now, although she was in no shape to give him details.

“I- I saw him,” she managed to get out.

“Saw him where? Was he here?” Hopper’s tone conveyed his sudden anxiety, and it was the only reason El bothered to answer. She figured it didn’t matter at this point anyway.

“I saw him last night… with mama.”

She should have gotten up last night and told him, not that it would have changed the outcome. Guilt crushed her anyway, and El deeply wished that she were already gone too.

She should have just let the monster kill her that night in the school.

Getting enough air in her lungs was starting to become hard, and a loud noise pounded in her ears as if she was under water. Hopper pulled her away and laid her down in the corner of the couch. She didn’t blame him for leaving her there alone.

He moved to the phone and picked it up with shaking hands dialing Joyce’s number. He accidentally hit a six instead of a three and forced a deep breath before attempting to dial it again. The phone rang four times and then the answering machine picked up.

“Shit,” he swore, slamming on the hook switch to hang up. He re-dialed, and this time, her voice came over the line after two rings.

“Hello?” she answered.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath- _she was okay._

“El and I are coming over,” he quickly informed her.

Joyce immediately sensed that something wasn’t right from his tone. Hopper cradled the cordless phone under his ear and bent down, grabbing his leather bag out from under his bed.

“Is everything okay?”

“I’ll explain when we get there,” he promised, not answering her question. “We’ll be over soon.”

“Okay,” Joyce cautiously replied, just before the phone disconnected.

Hopper threw a few changes of his clothes into the bag, not caring whether what he grabbed was clean or dirty. He went to El’s room and pulled her dresser drawers open, doing the same with her own clothes. He remembered to grab their toothbrushes from the bathroom, and he hoisted the packed bag on his shoulder. Hopper slipped El’s shoes on her feet and picked her up, pulling a blanket off the back of the couch with her. She went limp in his arms.

He carried her through the woods to the Blazer, setting her on her feet only to get his keys from his pocket. El climbed in the seat on her own, and Hopper threw their packed bag over the seat. It was warm out and she hadn’t needed the blanket that he stuck on the seat next to her, but she clutched it in her hands anyway.

Hopper thought El understood where they were going from the phone call, but when they pulled into Joyce’s long driveway, she looked to him almost as if she were surprised.

“Joyce…is okay?” she asked carefully.

“Yeah, kid,” he sighed. “Joyce is okay.”

When the vehicle stopped, El climbed out and practically ran inside. Hopper grabbed their bag out of the back seat and followed a few seconds behind her. Joyce stood up from the couch, just as El crashed through the front door and straight into her.

“Hey, sweetie, hey,” Joyce whispered. She welcomed the little girl into her arms, holding on to her just as tightly as El was holding her back.  El took big gulps of air, trying to calm down. “Sweetie, it’s okay. You’re home now,” Joyce promised when she felt El trembling.

Joyce pulled back for a second and brushed the hair from El’s eyes. That’s when she noticed that she hadn’t been crying because she was relieved or happy. When she realized this, she immediately pulled her back, cradling her head against her chest. Hopper dropped their bag by the door and slumped back against the wall.

Joyce’s wide, worried eyes found his, silently questioning him from across the room, but Hopper stayed quiet. She helped El over to the couch and sat down next to her. El curled her legs up, clearly not wanting to leave Joyce’s arms, so Joyce simply held her and stroked her hair instead.

“Hurt you,” El whimpered after a few minutes. When she spoke, she sounded more like the shy, scared child they found with the boys two years ago, than the teenager that disappeared from them only a few months ago.

“What, baby?”

“He’s going to hurt you too,” El tried again.

Joyce looked to Hopper, and he came over and sat down in a chair across from the two of them. “Terry Ives died last night. We’re pretty sure Brenner’s responsible,” Hopper explained simply.

Joyce’s eyes went wide, and she held El just a little bit tighter. El had already gone through so much trauma and tragedy in her life, especially recently, and now this.

“My fault mama is dead,” El sobbed.

“Sweetheart, no,” Joyce told her instantly, pulling her back to look her in the eyes. “No,” she repeated. “You listen to me. I don’t want you to think for even one second that any of this is your fault. Do you hear me?” Joyce spoke with an intensity that El had not heard from her before. El averted her eyes, and Joyce took both of her hands in her own. “Baby, I mean it. This is **not** your fault. None of this is your fault,” she reiterated, squeezing her hands for emphasis.

Hopper raked his hands through his hair and dropped his head to one hand, running his fingers across his forehead. He was her father and he should have known she was feeling this way. He should have been the one to promise her that this wasn’t her fault, instead of just panicking and throwing her in the car.

“But,” El took a shaky inhale. “If I were never born, none of this would have ever happened to mama. She would be normal. She would be alive.” Her voice dropped when she spoke the last sentence.

“Honey, your mama would have sacrificed _everything_ just to keep you safe. I know it,” Joyce promised.

El didn’t know if that was true, but Joyce had never lied to her before, so she didn’t argue.

And though El hadn’t been tired at all, after a few minutes of Joyce calmly stroking her hair, her eyelids grew heavy and she let out a deep, shaky breath before they closed. She drifted in and out of consciousness hearing bits and pieces of Joyce and Hopper’s conversation.

Hopper let out a heavy sigh when he thought that El was asleep. “She knew something like this was going to happen, Joyce,” he said. “That must be why she’s been avoiding seeing everyone. She thought that if she showed she didn’t care about anyone anymore, then maybe he’d leave them alone.”

“You think he’s going to go after the other kids,” Joyce responded. It wasn’t a question.

“I don’t know how I’m going to stop it from happening,” he told her with an honesty that terrified him. Hopper felt that their safety rested solely on his shoulders. “I need to find him,” he sighed. “It’s only going to stop when he’s dead.”

El heard Hopper say that, and she knew that it was true.

“What can we do today?” Joyce asked, trying to think logically. They couldn’t tackle a problem like this all at once, but they could do something to keep the kids safe today. “Bring them all over here?”

Hopper had to think about that for a moment. Was he just gathering them all up for slaughter if he did that? Or was it better than the alternative which was to just leave them unprotected at their own houses.

“Yeah,” he finally agreed. “Yeah, I think we have to.”

Joyce watched Hopper closely as his anxiety appeared to be swallowing him up. He’d been her safe place when everything was falling apart for 2 years now, so seeing him this way over the past few weeks had been strange.

“Okay,” she told him confidently. “Then we invite them over to stay the night, at least for tonight while we get a handle on what we’re going to do.” Hopper was surprised by Joyce’s confidence when she spoke. He knew she was just doing her best to keep him held together, even though she probably felt like falling apart too. “It’s her first time seeing everyone since she’s been back?” Joyce confirmed, worrying about how El was going to handle seeing all her friends at once.

“It is...and I don’t know. I guess she might feel a little better about it now that we all know what’s going on.”

“But she’s also grieving,” Joyce added, taking a slow breath. “We will just try to make everything as normal as we can and give her whatever she needs right now,” she decided.  

Joyce understood the importance of that all too well. Though it had been months since Bob’s death, there were still days when grief and guilt sometimes hit her so hard that she almost couldn’t get out of bed. She couldn’t imagine what it was going to be like for El, who was just a kid and already blaming herself for things far beyond her control.

Hopper only nodded in agreement.

“Is Will home?” he asked after a few moments of silence.

“Yes, and I’m surprised he hasn’t come out of his room yet.”

Hopper felt a little concerned at that statement, but Joyce hadn’t seemed worried. He got up from the chair and Joyce turned her head to watch him stalk down the hallway. He knocked on Will’s closed door. After a second, louder knock, Will appeared. He had a Walkman in his hands and his headphones around his neck.

“Oh, hi,” Will smiled when he saw Hopper. “Is El here too?” he asked excitedly, coming down the hall. He walked out to the living room and found her asleep on the couch with his mom.

“I need you to call Mike for me,” Hopper said, holding out the telephone for him. He could have made the call himself, but just in case Karen answered, he figured it would be better for Will to call.

“Uh, yeah, sure. Is everything okay?” Will looked back and forth from Hopper to his mom.

“Just do what Hopper asks, okay honey?”

Will dialed Mike’s number, while Hopper paced the floor in front of him.

“Hi Mrs. Wheeler, is Mike home?”

After a second, Will covered the mouthpiece and said, “He’s coming.” Will wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be calling him for, but Hopper pulled the phone from his hands just as Mike answered anyway.

“Hello?” Mike answered.

“Hey, kid.”

Mike’s mom had told him Will was on the phone and it took him a second to realize who the voice actually belonged to.

“So last night El’s mother was killed by Brenner, and we think he might try to come after you guys too.”

Hopper was honest and straight to the point- he knew the kids could handle it. Afterall, this wasn’t the first time they’d been in this position.

Will’s eyes flashed to his mother, and he sat down on her other side. Joyce placed her hand on top of his, keeping the other one on El’s back.

“What?! Oh my God, how is she?” Mike immediately asked.

Of course his first question was about El and not about the fact that someone was out there possibly plotting his death.

Hopper ignored it, giving him instructions instead. “Listen, I need you to get everyone together and come over to the Byers’ house as soon as you can. Be sure to tell your parents that you’re all going to be spending the night.”

“Okay chief. We’re on the way,” Mike promised quickly, and then the line went dead.

El still hadn’t actually fallen to sleep yet, but she kept her eyes pressed closed so that she didn’t have to join in any of the conversations. She felt sick when she thought about her friends having to come over, and the fact that they were in danger because of _her_.

While the kids were all excited to see El, Mike had told them on the way over what happened and they all seemed to understand the importance of the situation. He had also disclosed what El was like the last time he saw her, just so that they wouldn’t make her any more uncomfortable or upset than what she probably already was.

In less than a half an hour, four kids were standing on the Byers’ front porch, each with a bag of belongings slung over their shoulders.

Will answered the door, and Hopper corralled them all into the kid’s room to talk.

“Now, we don’t know how he did it just yet, but from what El said, it definitely sounds like it was him. If you see something, hear something, whatever...I need you to tell me immediately,” he stressed. The kids all nodded in response. “Understandably, El’s upset. But if you could just be gentle around her, and still, you know, maybe sort of try to act normal, I think that’d be best for her.”

Hopper was pretty sure that any other group of kids would react with a little more concern about being told that someone was actively trying to murder them, but these kids didn’t even seem phased. They were a mentally tough group, and as much as they sometimes annoyed the living daylights out of him, he was truly thankful for their presence in El’s life.

While Hopper was in talking to the other kids, Joyce decided she needed to get El up.

“Hey baby,” she spoke softly, rubbing her back. El knew that they were alone, so she opened her eyes. “Your friends are here. Would you like to see them, or do you want to go to my room to rest for a little bit longer?”

El was quiet for a moment before she decided, “I’d like to see them.”

“Okay,” Joyce smiled down at her, and it made El feel just a little bit better. “I’m sure they are all going to be so happy to see you. But if you need some time to yourself, you are more than welcome to go to my bedroom for some privacy.”

El took a deep breath and nodded, just as the group’s footsteps came rushing down the hallway.

She stood up, and to both Hopper and Mike’s dismay, headed straight for Mike. He almost fell over from the impact as her arms wrapped under his, and her hands tightly gripped his shoulders. She stayed there for only a few seconds, and then pulled back, her eyes shifting back and forth across his face, realizing just how much she had missed him.

“Hi,” she whispered. Her lips pressed together in the closest thing to a smile that Hopper had seen since she’s been home.

Mike was blinking quickly, clearly trying to hold back his emotions. “I- I’m really sorry about your mom,” he told her.

“Yeah, El. We all are,” Max agreed, pushing Mike out of the way to give her a hug. When she pulled back, El gave a slight nod because she didn’t know what you were supposed to say in a situation like this. And she really didn’t want to talk about mama, at least not right now.

The kids looked her over, and though they tried not to make it obvious, their curiosity won out. She saw multiple pairs of eyes pause when they got to her still badly bruised and injured legs and ankles. El felt even more self-conscious because she was still in her pajama shorts and shirt from the night before, while everyone else was dressed. She walked over to the bag that Hopper had packed and dug through the haphazardly thrown together outfits.

“Did you bring me any pants?” she asked. It didn’t seem like an important thing, but El turned and looked hopefully at Hopper.

“Sorry, kid. I don’t know what’s in there. Just pulled some stuff from your dresser.” El continued looking anyway, pulling out all of his clothes too, just to be sure.

Joyce recognized that El was uncomfortable having her injuries exposed. “I’m sure I have some pants that will fit you,” she told her softly, placing a hand on her shoulder. El looked up at her gratefully and followed her down the hallway to her bedroom.

When the two disappeared, Dustin said, “Je-sus. Did you see-“

“Yes, Dustin. We did. And you can shut up about it,” Mike interrupted, glaring at him.

“Sorry,” he apologized sheepishly. “It’s just- wow. Do you know what happened?” His question was directed to Mike since he was the only one who had seen her since she’d been back.

“I don’t. And don’t ask her,” he answered.

 _So much for trying to make El feel normal,_ Mike thought to himself.

He glanced at Hopper who was trying hard to pretend he wasn’t hearing this conversation while he repacked their bag. However, their eyes briefly connected, and he silently thanked the kid for understanding.

Joyce found a pair of sweatpants with a tie around the waist and handed them to her. El had lost some weight since she last saw her, and Hopper had informed her on the phone yesterday that she had barely eaten anything since she’d been home either.

El changed her clothes, feeling a little bit better now that her legs were covered, and she went back out to the living room to join her friends.

Will was already getting the Atari out, and Hopper and Joyce went to the kitchen to talk. Four of the kids played SwordQuest and Raiders of the Lost Ark for most of the afternoon, while El stayed wrapped up safe in Mike’s arms the entire time.

Joyce ordered pizza for dinner and Hopper was surprised to see that El actually ate an entire slice without having to be coaxed into it. Her lips even curled up into a real smile when Dustin accidentally sat down on Will’s plate of hot pizza, getting the cheese and toppings stuck to his shorts. 

He wasn’t sure what changed in El from yesterday to today, because if anything, things had only gotten worse. Maybe she really did just need to spend some time with her friends.

Except that wasn’t it, at least, not completely.

El had realized while she laid with Joyce earlier that afternoon that she was no longer helpless. Brenner didn’t have physical control over her right now, and though he was following through on the threats he had made while she _was_ under his control, it was up to her to stop him. She was the only one who could, and she had to do it before anyone else got hurt.

When it got late and the kids grew quieter, Joyce collected all the extra blankets, pillows, and sleeping bags in the house and brought them into Will’s bedroom. Max’s parents were under the impression that she was having a sleepover with Jane only, but Joyce wasn’t too worried about the boys and girls all sleeping in the same room. Even Hopper had agreed to it, just happy to see that El was actually awake and functioning for longer than an hour or two like she had been the past few days.

Will tried to give his bed up to El, but she repeatedly refused, promising that she would be fine sleeping on the floor with everyone else.

Mike could hardly believe that his day was ending with a sleepover with El. Just a few days ago, he hadn’t even known whether or not she was alive. And now she was really here, safe and sound next to him. Sure, they had other things to worry about, but none of that seemed to matter now that he had her again.

As everyone changed into their pajamas and settled into their makeshift beds, El told Mike she would be back in just a minute. She went out to the living room where Hopper and Joyce were sitting on the sofa.

He had his arm around Joyce’s shoulders, and El felt something that could only be described as relief when she saw them with each other. Even when things were bad, _really bad_ , Joyce made Hopper sort of okay, and El was so glad for that.

She slowly approached the couch and sat down in between them on Hopper’s knee. He brought his hand up to her back, and El turned to hug him. He buried his hand in her hair, and she just stayed there for a few moments, trying to memorize everything that she loved about him- the way she felt safe when his arms enveloped her, the way his heart beat strong and rhythmically under her ear, the way he smelled like cigarettes and his soap that reminded her of a pine tree. She bit her lip to hold back the tears she could feel threatening to slip from her eyes; she didn’t want to cry anymore.

Hopper pressed a kiss to the top of her head and Joyce bent down to do the same.

El finally gathered the courage to say something she’d been thinking about since before she was even home.

“I love you,” she sniffled, clutching the back of his shirt in her hands. She didn’t miss how Hopper’s hand tightened against her when she said it.

“I love you too,” he replied after a few seconds of silence, this time blinking back tears of his own. He hadn’t expected El to say those words to him anytime soon, and especially not tonight.

El picked her head up to address Joyce next. “I know you aren’t my mama, but you take care of me like a mama and I really love you too.”

Joyce brought her close for a kiss on her cheek. “Sweetheart, we love you so much. I missed you baby, and I’m so glad you are home.”

El pressed her eyes closed one more time, as the guilt ate away at her even more. Joyce and Hopper deserved better than her.

She took a breath and forced herself to stand up.

“We’ll probably be sleeping out here tonight if you need anything, okay?” Hopper told her, even though he was fairly certain he wasn’t going to be doing much sleeping while on watch duty.

El’s throat felt tight, and so she managed a half smile and a nod in response.  

“Night kid.”

“We’ll see you in the morning honey,” Joyce added.

El said good night and walked quickly into the bathroom. She sat down on the edge of the tub and unsuccessfully attempted to get her breathing under control. She dropped her head to her hands and tears slipped down her cheeks, her shoulders shaking with each silent sob. It wasn’t long before a loud knock interrupted her, and she quickly wiped her cheeks with her palms, opening the door to find Dustin waiting with his pajamas in his hand.

“Oh sorry El,” he apologized when he realized that it was her in the bathroom.

She shrugged and gave him a small smile. “It’s okay. I’m finished,” she told him.

She sniffled and wiped her cheeks once more before she made her way back to Will’s bedroom. She found Mike already sitting down in the spot that he had made for them on the floor closest to the door. His eyes softened, and he smiled when he saw her.

“Is this okay?” he asked, motioning to the pillow and blankets he had laid out for her next to him.

El nodded and smiled too, sitting down next to him while they waited for everyone to get settled into their spots. Mike and El were on one side of the bed, while Lucas and Max were on the other. Dustin slept at the foot of the bed and when he heard the two couples talking and whispering to each other after the lights went out, he suddenly felt really lame about being the only one sleeping on the floor without a girlfriend. He wondered if Will felt the same way.

El hadn’t enjoyed being in the dark lately, but tonight when the lights turned off, she felt comfortable. Will had a nightlight plugged in his bedroom that no one even made a comment about, though most other kids his age probably would have gotten teased for still having.

El pulled her blanket up around her shoulders.

“Are you cold?” Mike asked, ready to give her his blanket if she needed it.

“No. I’m okay,” she whispered back. El turned over on her side so that she could talk to him better but felt a sudden need to scoot even closer.

 _Intimate_ , El thought when she realized that she needed Mike closer to her.

Joyce had taught her the meaning of that word only a few months prior, though it seemed like so long ago now. It was just after Hopper had caught her and Mike kissing in her bedroom for the first time and about lost his mind. El was complaining to Joyce because she didn’t see what Hopper’s problem was.

They weren’t doing anything wrong- they were just kissing, and it’s not like she wanted to have _sex_ with Mike…at least not yet. El hadn’t been able to pinpoint a word for what she felt, but she just knew that she wanted to be near him, or more like she wanted to be _touching_ him, all of the time. Joyce told her that intimate meant that you just wanted to be close with someone that you care about and it wasn’t necessarily sexual. El remembered laughing and asking if she could teach that to Hopper too.

Mike pulled his arm out from the blanket and tentatively put it around El’s shoulders. El slid her legs under Mike’s blanket, and after a second, she shrugged her blanket off her back. Mike adjusted his blanket over the two of them instead, and El let out a satisfied sigh, not meaning for it to come out as loud as it did. They weren’t exactly alone, but if the others heard her, they didn’t mention it.

“Better?” Mike asked. His voice was soft and low, and it made her stomach feel fluttery.

Mike knew they weren’t supposed to be sleeping like this. Certainly not this close, and definitely not under the same blanket, but he wasn’t about to tell El that. Tonight, Hopper was going to have to pry them apart if he had a problem with it.

El draped one of her arms across his stomach and her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt.

“Much better,” she answered softly, closing her eyes. El couldn’t believe that she had forgotten how good it felt to be with Mike. It was so good that it almost made her forget how awful she’d been feeling lately and the fact that her friends and family were all still in danger.

Almost.

In the living room, Joyce and Hopper sat in front of the nightly news, not really watching it, though they both were looking at the screen. Joyce offered Hopper a drink, but he declined not wanting to be compromised at all, just in case.

“I don’t think one drink will hurt,” she told him, pouring him a double shot of whiskey anyway.

Hopper had been so tense and under so much stress these past few weeks, and she just wished it would all be over. It was so hard to see him this way, especially when there wasn’t anything they could do tonight except sit here and wait.

The two of them had planned to stay on the couch all night, just as they had told El. Hopper felt a little tension dissipate after he finished his glass, and even more when they finally settled in and he wrapped his arms around Joyce. It had been too long, and he felt like he could breathe a little bit better now that she was here with him.

It almost felt like they could make it through anything together.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Hopper slipped away for a minute to go check on the kids. He pushed Will’s bedroom door open a little further and his eyes quickly scanned the room, making sure all 6 kids were safe and accounted for.

He couldn’t help but pause on Mike and El for just a little longer. The two kids were sharing the same blanket. Mike’s arm was wrapped tightly around El’s waist, and she was draped over him, using his shoulder as a pillow.

Though part of him was just glad to see her getting back to her normal behavior, seeing El sleeping with Mike this way made Hopper’s stomach ache in an entirely different fashion than it had been the rest of the day.

At least the boy would be safe as long as she was sleeping _on top of him,_ he thought.

Hopper was absolutely certain El would end anyone who tried to lay a finger on the kid. But on the contrary, if anyone wanted to get to her in the most personal way, it would involve Mike’s well-being, and he couldn’t help but feel that something terrible was coming their way, regardless of the precautions they were going to try to take. Hopper hated to think about what would happen to El if Mike got hurt in the middle of all this, or worse.

With a sigh, he left the door open and walked back to the living room.

“Everyone okay?” Joyce wondered, sleepily.

“Yes,” he promised, sitting down on the couch, pulling her back into his arms.

“Good,” she murmured, closing her eyes.

Hopper stayed awake all night. He wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway. There was no way Brenner was going to get in to this house without him knowing.  

In the morning, Mike woke up when he felt El’s leg moving on top of his. She was holding him tightly and he wondered if she was having a bad dream, but then he felt her pull away and sit up.

Mike opened his eyes, looking at her with concern. “Is everything okay?”

It was still pretty early and no one else had been awake yet.

“Oh, uh, yes. Fine. I-,” she paused. “I just have to go to the bathroom,” she told him after a few seconds.

“Oh okay,” he nodded, giving her a small smile. El had been looking at him with an intense expression, but then her eyes softened. She stared at him for a few seconds before she got up and left the room.

El had been gone for only a few minutes, but it was longer than what Mike had expected, and he started to feel a little anxious. He decided to get up, just in case she gotten up and decided not to come back to bed.

When he walked past the bathroom door, it was still closed, but he went to the living room to see if she was there anyway.

“Everything alright?” Hopper asked when he turned and saw the expression on Mike’s face.

Joyce woke up when she heard them talking.

“Oh, uh yeah. It’s fine. I was just looking to see if El was out of the bathroom yet,” Mike replied.

Hopper nodded, and Mike decided to sit down in the living room for a few minutes to wait for her. For some reason, he couldn’t stop his leg from anxiously bouncing up and down. After another 5 minutes or so had passed, Hopper questioned him on how long El had already been in there. The way Hopper’s face hardened when he answered made Mike’s stomach drop.

Hopper stood up and walked over to the door, knocking loudly.

“El? Are you doing okay?” he called.

There was no answer.

“El,” he tried again, practically pounding on the door this time. “Kid, if you don’t answer me, I’m going to come in.”

Silence.

He turned the knob in his hand, but the door had been locked.

By this point, Joyce and Mike were standing next to him at the door.

“Do you have a key?” Hopper asked Joyce with a rising panic.

“No, just get it open,” Joyce quickly told him, giving him the permission to destroy it if necessary.

Hopper held onto the door handle and threw his body hard against the door. The door and its frame buckled with a noisy crack, and the door was open.

“El,” he called, as the three of them rushed into the bathroom.

They were only met with a cool morning breeze from the bathroom window.

It was wide open and El was gone.


End file.
